Help:Bypass your cache

In order to reduce loading times and save bandwidth when you visit FANDOM, your web browser is instructed to save the current view of the page. This is called your "cache". If you visit that page again, your browser will check to see if there is a newer version of a page available. If there is, a new version is downloaded. If not, it will quickly load much of the page straight from your cache.

Sometimes, however, you might continue to see the cached version of the page even when a newer one is available, for a variety of reasons. This can be frustrating if a change has recently been made to the page.

In order to ensure you're getting the latest version of the page you can manually bypass your cache — a process which is sometimes also called a hard refresh — in which you effectively tell your browser to ignore its cache and fetch the entire page again from the server. This is sometimes confused with clearing your cache, but that's actually a different process with similar effects, and something we won't discuss here.

When to bypass your cache
Generally, you may need to bypass your cache if you have made changes to: However, if you see anything "odd" or not changing, it's worth bypassing your cache to see if the problem resolves.
 * A CSS page (personal or community-level)
 * A JS page
 * The wiki favicon

How to bypass your cache
For most browsers, bypassing the cache is simple. Below are some browser-specific ways to do so:
 * Chrome
 * Windows: Hold the Ctrl key and press the F5 key.
 * macOS: Hold both the ⌘ Cmd and ⇧ Shift keys and press the R key.
 * Chrome OS: Hold both the ⇧ Shift and click the Reload toolbar button.


 * Safari
 * Though it's been long advised to hold down the ⇧ Shift key and click the Reload toolbar button, modern versions of Safari have a better method. Hold both the ⌥ Opt and ⌘ Cmd keys and press the R key. Apple calls this "reloading the page from origin", which is just a different way of saying "bypassing your cache".


 * Firefox
 * Windows: Hold the Ctrl key, and press F5.
 * macOS: Hold the ⌘ Cmd and ⇧ Shift keys, and then press R.


 * Internet Explorer
 * Hold the Ctrl key, and press F5 (or click the Refresh button).

For more information (including other browsers), see this page on Wikipedia.

Forcing the server to re-render a page
Bypassing your own cache might not be enough if the updated content is not being properly displayed or is contained in a template or other transcluded page. You may need to purge the server's cache of old versions of the page in order for the new material to be visible.

If that doesn't work, you can try debugging your code by adding ?debug=1 at the end of the URL of any page. Debugging your code means that the code will almost 100% guarantee the load of the recently added script(s) and/or stylesheet(s).

Further help and feedback

 * Browse and search other help pages at Help:Contents
 * Check Fandom Community Central for sources of further help and support
 * Check Contacting Fandom for how to report any errors or unclear steps in this article
 * Learn how to use Fandom in Fandom University: short how-to videos for all levels of experience